He looked up from his coffee.
Mia's eyes moved to Elizabeth with immediate interest. "The date?"
"The date."
"Tonight." Mia absorbed this. "Right. Okay." She checked her phone. "That is Priya's mum outside. See you later."
She hugged both Darcy and Elizabeth and left, the door closing behind her.
The kitchen was quiet. Elizabeth was at the counter with her laptop and her coffee and the composed expression of someonewho had said something and was waiting to see what happened next.
"What time are you leaving?" Darcy said.
"Seven."
"And coming back?"
"Late, probably. Don't wait up."
He set his cup down.
He knew, even as he opened his mouth, that he was about to make a mistake. He knew it the way you knew a step was going to creak before you put your weight on it. He put his weight on it anyway.
"That is a bad example," he said. "For Mia."
Elizabeth looked at him.
“What?”
"Coming home late from a date with someone you are just meeting is a bad example for Mia."
"Mia will be asleep," Elizabeth said. Her voice had gone to the level tone. The one that meant she was not going to raise it because she did not need to. "And even if she were not, Mia knowing that the adults in her life are allowed to have a life is not a bad example. It is a normal one."
"I am not saying you cannot go."
"Good. Because that is not a conversation you have any standing to have with me."
"I am saying the timing —"
"There is no timing," Elizabeth said. "I am going on a date. That is what is happening tonight. You can disagree with it or not. It does not change anything."
He looked at her. She looked back. The kitchen held them both and did not take sides.
"So you would rather leave your family here," he said, "and spend the evening with a stranger."
He heard it the moment it left his mouth.
Not the words themselves. The word.Family. The way he had said it. Like it was already true. Like he had been carrying it as true for longer than he had acknowledged.
Elizabeth's expression changed. Not softened. Changed.
"Darcy." She set her laptop down. "We are not a family."
He said nothing.
"Mia is our family. She is the person we are here for, the reason we are in this house together, and she is the one thing that matters between us. You and I are not a family. We are two people who made a promise to a fifteen-year-old girl and we are keeping it." She picked up her laptop again. Her voice was even. Precise. Not cruel. "The best we are is friends. And that is generous on some days. But it does not mean I cannot have a life outside of this house. It does not mean either of us has to stop existing as a person because we are sharing a house."
The kitchen was very quiet.
